Brave New World?

New opinion research in the United States from four economists, Michelle N. Meyer, Tammy Tan, Daniel J. Benjamin, David Laibson, and Patrick Turley, finds that 40% of those surveyed would be more likely than not to test and pick IVF embryos for intellectual aptitude and elite university admission potential if such tests exist are offered to the public. 28% would favor gene editing to increase the likelihood of admission to a top-100 university. While undoubtedly distressing to ethicists, the results are unsurprising to anyone who spends time talking with parents in private, independent schools.

A quote from a geneticist in MIT Technology Review reveals a subtler and more relevant issue for those in the education sector:

“These are important results. They support the existence of a gap between the generally negative attitudes of researchers and health professionals … and the attitudes of the general public,” says Shai Carmi, a geneticist and statistician at the Hebrew University in Israel.

We see the same gap between administrators and faculty on the one hand and parents and many board members on the other. While polygenic screening of embryos for university aptitude is not yet available, for many parents, blunter instruments such as elite secondary school admission and SAT prep courses count as proxies.